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Do you have the perfect idea of what you want in a dress but no way to design it? In the past, graphics programs were expensive and difficult to use. However, with the increasing amount of free programs and digital photography, designing your own gown can be simple as a cut and paste!
No computer-saavy person should be without a good graphics program. If you don't want to invest in PaintShop Pro or Adobe Photoshop, there are several free programs you can use. I highly recommend the free software Paint.Net. It's the only graphics program Mattie uses and is very user friendly. Gimp is also a free, powerful graphics editing program. You will discover that a good graphics program can REALLY help with your wedding planning and wedding planning projects.
Design with The Sims 2 Game
There are two main ways you can design your own dress. One is easy, another is a bit more difficult. The first (and more difficult) way is to, very literally, make your own digital 3-D dress with the popular video game The Sims 2 by Maxis/Electronic Arts. Not only is this a wonderfully fun game but you can make custom Sims and design your own clones in them. While I don't suggest running out and getting the game for this purpose, if you already have it you can do your own dress designs. Every copy of The Sims 2 comes with Body Shop. Using Body Shop and a graphics editing tool, you can custom-make your own clothing. MikeInside offers a great Body Shop tutorial. Play around with it- you'll find you can create the wedding dress of your dreams. You may find that you need a totally different base, also called a mesh, to design your dress. You can either download a premade mesh or make one of your own. NeptuneSuzy has a great mesh creation tutorial on Linda's Sims 2torials site. If you want some ideas and/or need bridal accessories, you should visit PronupSims.net. The site is in both English and French and has just gorgeous wedding gowns as well as meshes.
| Tip: | If you're using Sims 2 to make your gown and wish to share it, be sure you give credit where credit is due! If you used another person's mesh to make your dress, make sure that you can redistribute it FIRST and be certain to give that person credit. |
 A cut-and-paste designed gown. Parts of 3 different dresses were used for this design. Design By Cut and Paste
The second (and easier) way is find various dresses that have things about them that you like and then merge them into a single image. First, start by finding pictures of various dresses that have parts that you like. Choose one that has the basic silhouette or skirt that you like. Next, select parts of other dresses you like. Copy those parts and paste them as new layers into your picture. Use the eraser tool within your graphics program to erase around it until you have just the part. Move and scale the parts until they merge in with the rest of the dress- you may need to rotate them, and/or make them large or smaller. You may also need to adjust the lighting and darkness of the parts depending on how good you want the picture. If you want a special back, you'll also need to do this for the back of your dress. As a final touch, I like to merge the image and then use the clone tool (also known as the stamp tool/healing brush tool) to blend the parts of the dress together. Finally, I paint around the entire image so the background looks uniform.
| Tip: | Be sure to save lots of copies of your file! You should try to save a draft file with all your layers before you flatten the image and save it as a .gif, .jpg, or .png file. |
Once you've gotten the image together, you can print it and take it to a dress designer to have your very own custom-made gown. If you still want to buy a mass-produced gown, you can use your custom gown as a guide to find what you want.
Design For Designers
If you're already a dressmaker or a graphic designer, you will have other tools at your disposal to help in the design process. Dressmakers may want to put together a prototype dress in muslin or inexpensive fabric made from patterns and techniques they already possess. For professional graphic designers, there are many clothing add-on programs to pre-existing professional graphics programs.
External Links & Sources
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